Case study: 5 takeaways from redesigning a top tier auto website

A couple of weeks ago, we launched a new Volkswagen website for the US market. Designing the digital storefront for a global brand has come with its own set of challenges.

As a leading auto company that operates in more than 150 countries, a strong customer experience design is vital and will undoubtedly provide a strong foundation as the brand continues to grow. Given the global operation of the brand with many stakeholders across the world, there will undoubtedly be constraints. One of the most difficult, yet crucial, challenges throughout this customer experience redesign was to ensure we aligned with the global brand while focusing on the US incremental market growth.

Knowing the nature of the project scale, there are some lessons that I learned through the whole development experience. Here are my biggest takeaways from redesigning the Volkswagen website.

1. Universalizing the design for different markets could be a pitfall

As the brand grows globally, it is important to keep the design consistent across all markets. In 2019, VW launched a new brand design and logo. Its new brand design has become a uniform global 360 experience across all channels. I couldn’t agree more that a brand has to have design consistency everywhere across channels. However, given each market has its uniqueness, I realized not all designs would work for a specific market.

During the research phase, we studied the auto industry in the US and its competitors compared to the rest of the world. Simply put, it is essential to immerse in the brand’s global heritage and story, but we need to understand the cultural context for the related market. In the end, we’re designing for the people who have a particular background and culture.

Usability testing helped us to be more empathetic to the people we were designing for. We followed the design guideline and tested the website on some usability study participants. We discovered not all designs that worked in other countries, such as European countries, worked in the US. Some visual translations don’t communicate…